As noted by Janny Hu in the introduction, we shook things up a bit this year. Instead of just a mishmash collection of Bargain Bites (categorized as $12 and under), we analyzed a bunch of categories one by one, and then highlighted our five favorites in each one. Of course it’s impossible to go to every Chinese restaurant in the Bay Area, but we tried a lot.

As you can see, some categories are more specific than others — ramen, banh mi, tacos — due to the saturation of contenders in the genre. Others, like Asian or Mediterranean, are broader because specific dishes weren’t as prolific.

But which foods do you wish were more common in the Bay Area? Where are we lacking? Some of the cheap eats categories that we wish were more ubiquitous in the Bay Area — and especially San Francisco — are Filipino food, Taiwanese breakfast food, pizza slice specialists, Japanese curry, and the halal meat trucks that are on every corner in Manhattan. (That’s not to say those are unrepresented; just under-represented.) And while we’re fantasizing, when will the recent movement of California’s vegetable-centric cuisine trickle down to the cheap eats realm?